


Spirals of Dust

by Jean_grantaire



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 08:10:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12553052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jean_grantaire/pseuds/Jean_grantaire
Summary: When galaxies collide, it can cause enough friction to generate entire new stars. What, then, for two lives that collide over a course of centuries?





	Spirals of Dust

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings for mild swearing and implied violence/death

There wasn’t a first time that they met. Or perhaps there was, like the first snowflake of a blizzard, buried beneath the weight of a thousand others until its edges blurred and it was indistinguishable from the rest. A moment lost to the passage of time, a moment that stood sheltered from the narrative of history as it had passed without any record to be remembered by. A moment that might have played out a thousand different scenes under a thousand different skies. A moment that was still inevitably, inescapably theirs.

After that, their meetings come like those first memories of an infant; in random bursts and flashes, some with startling clarity and some completely incomprehensible.

There is a sun hanging low and hot and heavy, just at the point of kissing Egyptian soil; a mouth stained dark with the juice of fresh berries; the shrill scream of a child; the close presence of a hot night as dark eyes meet for just a fraction of a second across a busy party room; the cold bite of a dagger.

The first time he remembers, he is not a Bourbon. Beyond the labels fixed to him by various slave masters, in fact, he doesn’t have a name at all. This is because he is a thing, a thing to be used and then tossed aside after he is broken. He knows that much even centuries before he is given anything approaching an education. His chains are as much a part of him as the wrists they have fastened in their grim embrace, the only thing as consistent as the heat beating down on him is the beatings of fists and insults from free men and once, once, he saw hair that shone more brightly than any gold jewellery. Sometimes he thinks it might have belonged to another slave; sometimes he is sure it lived on the head of a rich man. He can never quite recall the face that accompanied it.

_The first time he remembers, he is Italian. Many years later, cast out from French high society, he will throw to his brother an offhand comment about how crossing the border feels like coming home (an opinion that will fade with alarming speed as Italian nobles turn out to be even worse than French ones), but for now it is a very different landscape, and it is all he knows. He trades in silks that are ancestors to those which he will parade around the French court in a distant echo of the future. It is on a Monday that he sells his heart, to a boy with eyes as bright as stars and skin softer than any fabric. For a whole afternoon they belong to one another, twin souls unwound and laid to rest against his bed. Duty forces its way between them after only a precious handful of stolen hours and the feeling is shrugged off, forgotten, to gather dust between the floorboards trodden by their bare feet._

The world does not exist beyond the stone outer wall of the monastery. Sometimes they have guests, whose clothes are a shocking reminder of an impure life beyond religion, but they could just as easily be from Heaven as from the nearest estate. By some strange will of God, he takes most of his duties together with the brother he sleeps next to – three years his junior, obedient through cowardice rather than genuine loyalty and yet more beautiful than any good man he’s ever met. Sometimes he wonders, if he were to reach out and touch this masterpiece of God’s, would he feel otherworldly beneath his hand? Sometimes he wonders a lot more than that. The fact that he will go to Hell for not confessing to the Abbot out to terrify him, but he can only wonder if he will meet his brother again there.

_The world does not exist beyond the gardens of Saint Cloud sprawled out before him, the silk robe against his skin and the cool fingers of the hand in his. On afternoons like this they might be any other tiny-minded noble couple surveying their land, heads full of laughable ambition and hearts full of false feelings for the new serving-maid. On afternoons like this they might be any other noble couple married to one another, and neither of them might be threatened with engagement to the sister of the fucking king of England. On afternoons like this, when his lover is the most breathtakingly stunning part of the scenery that stretches its sleepy limbs for miles ahead, he entertains the idea that he might be in love. He uses their joined hands to tug his prince closer and crown him with a kiss – this is a world that he can be king of, at least, at last. When he pulls back something has softened in his expression, in the very air around them._

_“Stay with me.” The first words of a new monarch, afforded vulnerability in a world where only two hearts beat._

_“Always, my star.”_

_This time is merciful – they fight and they fuck and they spend decades together in the lap of luxury. Perhaps it would even be perfect, were it not for the two wives that force a space between them, the two years of exile, the wars and spiteful courtiers and endless streams of lovers; the life filtering in through the cracks in their bliss. They are granted the pleasure of fighting over whether that is a grey hair (never), whether this is a wrinkle (absolutely not), they cause scandals and cheat at cards and spend a fortune on shoes. Sometimes they cannot stand to be in the same room as one another. Sometimes he is so overwhelmed by love that it frightens him. Sometimes he wants to laugh in the king’s face – perhaps the crown belongs to him, but the reins of the whole world are in_ his _hands._

They are barely given the time to meet. He only recognises that golden hair, tangled and frizzy as it is, when they are sat together in a cart, headed for the guillotine. They are pressed together along their sides, from knee to shoulder. He realises that he’ll never even know if he is recognised in turn. Around them, the crowd hisses and writhes like a serpent, like the sea smashing against the shore during a furious storm. One rotten, breathing organism. The last thing he knows is that it’ll be a terrible shame, when they cut away all of that gorgeous hair to let the hungry beast of the revolution at the neck beneath it.

_They are barely given time to meet. Cigarette smoke curls up away from his fingers into the dark of the night sky. He is shivering through his uniform, because it’s March 1915 and he’s stuck in a disgusting hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by rats and mud and the stink of rotting things. It’s been less than an hour since they came off of front line duty. Some of the men are sleeping; some are pretending to sleep. The only comfort is the warmth of his lover wedged in next to him, ten cold fingers tangled together between them. That, actually, is almost nice, in the same way that sharing the cigarette is nice. Safe, too, under the blanket of the night, and as close to romantic as anything in this hell is going to get. They could almost be stargazing (not that he would ever choose stargazing over being warm and dry and inside, even without the conditions of a trench near the fault line of a war). Home feels much further away than a month and a matter of miles._

_“I spy with my little eye something beginning with c.” The words are hardly loud enough to carry the few inches between them, their tone laced with explosives (not the kind that are launched blindly across no man’s land, but the kind that he uses often to fuel his petty arguments, to talk about his brother or the Germans or their useless commanders)._

_“Not in front of the men, darling.” It’s enough to earn a ghost of a laugh, a nudge of the shoulder._

_“Play nicely.” The words are accompanied, in a rude irony, by a sharp bite to his ear which makes him jump and lash out in response, his foot connecting (satisfyingly) with the solid shape of a leg._

_Sometimes, during moments like this when they can snatch whispers od conversations, they talk about life after the war, about a future where there will be a space for both of them to share and expensive nights out and lazy mornings and Sunday roasts._

_Three weeks later, there is no question of a future for either of them._

The room is the canvas of a messy painter, sunshine splashing across it in a muted filter through the curtains. The title of the piece: ‘ _Fucked Over by God or my brother?’._ From several worlds away, the doorbell rings, and he is still contemplating the cold floor between here and there when his phone buzzes angrily from the bedside table, several times in quick succession. He has already glanced at the other side of the bed to check for any reaction to the noise before remembering that his lover isn’t there. The realisation tastes unpleasant in his mouth, sits uncomfortably in his stomach.

“Philippe? I Know you’re in there!”

Of course, he should not have expected Lizzie to be above waking all of the neighbours on a Saturday morning, but that certainly doesn’t mean he has to be pleased that it’s his door she’s shouting at. Apparently, the shouting is a warning rather than an ultimatum, for it is less than a minute later that the metallic click of the front door unlocking signals she has found her spare key and taken the matter into her own hands.

He’s half-expecting it when she bursts into the room, looking wide-awake despite the fact that it is, as confirmed by his alarm clock, no later than 6am. Honestly, it’s almost enough to give him second thoughts about the day already.

“Come on, rise and shine!” Coupled with the brisk manner in which she throws open the curtains, Lizzie’s words leave little space for disagreement. “ _He_ has already been awake long enough to upset the caterers and the florist.” The words spark something warm deep in his chest and, as Lizzie jerks open the wardrobe door and the sunlight reaches in to glint off of the fancy logo on the dust jacket hanging inside, Philippe can’t bring himself to be anything other than excited.

**Author's Note:**

> as always i'm over @almostasunking


End file.
